A Well Balanced Diet; The Path To Lifelong Fitness

A well balanced diet adopted from a young age plays a significant role in achieving a lifetime of fitness and good health. Most experts believe that diet plays the major role in achieving weight loss goals. However, it goes without saying that no health and fitness program can ever be complete without an exercise routine. Exercise need not necessarily be a structured program. You can build an exercise routine into your daily schedule through your daily activities.

For instance, if you leave home fifteen minutes earlier than your regular time and instead of taking the bus from the closest bus station, you walk to the next one and catch the bus from there. Another exercise is taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

What Is A Well Balanced Diet?

A balanced diet has foods from all major food groups in the right quantity. The right quantity and the right type are both equally important.

You may ask why a meal of a chicken burger and French fries is an unbalanced one. The chicken is the protein, the bun in the burger and the potato in the fries are the carbohydrates, the lettuce, tomato and cucumber slices in the burger provide the vitamins and minerals, and the cheese in the burger is the fat. A perfectly well balanced diet, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, this is not true. Let us examine why. First the French fries. These are deep fried and sprinkled with salt. Therefore not only do they have excessive fat, and that too most likely the saturated type, they also have excessive salt. Consumption of excessive salt increases the probability of getting lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure.

Now let us look at the burger. The bun made of refined flour or wheat is low in fiber and nutrients. The chicken is again fried, and the cheese does not help either. This meal has far excess fat than what should be consumed in a well balanced diet, too much salt and poor quality carbohydrates. If you wash this down with a huge glass of aerated water, then that is a phenomenal amount of sugar consumed. Again not at all healthy.

How Should You Plan Your Diet?

If you take a little bit of effort and make your meals at home, eating a well balanced diet is not really difficult. A little bit of adjustment in our regular diet should work for most of us. This is of course assuming that you are not the type who knows all the takeaway and delivery boys by name.

The carbohydrates in our diet should preferably come from high fiber foods. Avoid refined flour and their products. Eat about five portions of fruits and vegetables per day.  Typically one portion would equal half a cucumber or one apple. Add two to three servings of dairy products – milk, cheese or yoghurt. Choose the low fat variety; these will help you lose weight. Get your proteins from lean meat or fish. Lentils too are a good source of proteins. Eat a small amount of fat, the unsaturated type.

A well balanced diet can quickly become a habit and will soon make you feel healthy and fit.